Memories: A A Thomas

            I went back to college in 2005 in order to acquire an Associates Degree in Business Management. One of the classes I took required all participants to make a marketing survey for the downtown area of Elizabethtown for the Preservation Society.

            My group decided we needed a first hand look at the area in question. Our thought was that this would give us a better idea of what the area offered to locals and visitors.

            Our group met on October third two thousand six. This was a day that for me became a walk thru memory. Our group parked next to the parking lot at the old Herb Jones building, beside the Cobbler Café that used to be a cobblers place of business across from the new courthouse. As we walked toward the old courthouse in the center of 31 W then proceeded up North Main my memories started to surface.

            I came to Elizabethtown in early January 1952. Until this time I had been raised in a coal mining camp in Eastern Kentucky. If you have never been in a coal mining camp, let me tell you a little about my memories of living in one. Everyone keeps to themselves; you never knew when the person living next door might be affected by a death from the mine. Then there is the coal dust; persistent, ever-present, invasive coal dust. There is no place you can go that does not have a film of coal dust. Not the house you live in, not the yard you play in, not the path going to the company store, not even the woods that lay close to the coal mining camp were exempt from the coal dust. So my first memories of Elizabethtown were of the clean streets and the fresh air.

            When I first moved to Elizabethtown there was a drugstore on each corner of the beginning of North Main; the drugstore on the right was where I first saw, bought and read my very first Superman comic book.

            As we proceeded toward the Brown-Pusey House on the left, I remembered the square dances that were held in the parking lot across from Bean Publishing. At that time there were no meters or curbs, just a large space marked for parking. When there was anything going on in Elizabethtown, such as the town square dances, a wagon would be hauled in for speakers or bands and that parking area was the area that was set up for the dances.

            There were several celebrations held annually in Elizabethtown. One of these was Old Fashioned Day when everyone would dress up in clothing from times gone by. My mother still has the dress and bonnet she wore back then. There are pictures of her being towed along in a wagon by the people she worked with. My sister won the best pet award during one of these celebrations. I have a picture of her wearing a long dress, ringlets falling down her back as she clutched the ribbon she won in one hand as she held our pet duck, Quackers, in the other.